Fracking: Feds delay sale of drilling leases in CA

Federal authorities have delayed their next sale of oil-drilling leases in a swath of California that has become a battleground in the nationwide fight over fracking.

A fracking operation in Monterey County. Photo: Steve Craig.

The Bureau of Land Management has postponed a May 22 sale that would have offered oil companies the chance to drill on four parcels in Fresno and Kern Counties. Both counties sit atop the Monterey Shale, an immense geologic formation that the federal government estimates could hold 15 billion barrels of oil.

The bureau did not set a new date for the lease sale but said it won’t happen in this fiscal year, which for the federal government ends on September 30. The sale could be held next year, said bureau spokesman Dave Christy.

Fracking opponents have challenged some of the bureau’s earlier Monterey Shale leases in court, and won. Last month, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled that the bureau broke the law when it failed to examine fracking’s potential risks during a 2011 sale of leases near the Salinas River.

Christy said the bureau’s decision to delay its next sale was not a direct result of the ruling.

Instead, the bureau’s California staff is stretched thin as a result of the federal government sequester and has decided to focus on managing existing leases rather than selling new ones. The court case added to that strain by using up staff time but didn’t force the bureau to call off the sale, Christy said.

“Whether BLM admits it or not, the agency knows it can’t lawfully hold additional lease sales in California without a full environmental review of the serious risks fracking poses to our air, water and wildlife,” said Brendan Cummings, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that sued the bureau.